You May not Aware of your Broken Website – Learn the Ways from Website Developers
Websites are excellent sources to generate revenues. But there are times, when despite an excellent looking website the effect is not really what you are looking for. You might have spent a lot of time, energy and not to mention money, but it is unable to garner the leads necessary since people cannot really find the website through the search engines. The problem may be related to broken links. This is actually a big problem since visitors are directed to a file or page which does not exist anymore. Website developers often call them dead links or link rot.
Broken links are indispensable parts of most websites. With the passage of time, it may happen that a link may become dysfunctional. But whatever it may be, you must ensure that people can connect with you through contact forms or purchase products without problems.
Effects on websites
SEO Backfire- There is no doubt that broken links or 404 page errors and missing images can leave a very negative impact on the minds of the users. Search engine giants such as Google claim that these do not actually affect the search engine rankings of a website but they do advocate the owners to fix the errors as soon as possible. Even most professional and experienced website designers or developers say that broken links should be fixed for good rankings.
User experience- One of the biggest frustrations that plague such a website is a bad user experience. Backlinks is a concept that helps in SEO purposes but if the backlink is broken then perpetually a good amount of traffic is lost. In fact, after reading the content of a site if the reader tries to click on a link and finds it malfunctioning then that creates a very annoying experience. Not only does it point to the fact that the website is not good enough, but it also proves that the content is irrelevant and outdated as well.
There are a number of tools easily available that can help you find out whether your website contains dysfunctional links or not. Tools such as W3C Link Checker, Xenu’s Link Sleuth, Google Webmaster Tools, Link Checker, Link Valet and Broken Link Checker help you in your quest without having to spend even a single penny.
Also Read - Web design mistakes that can ruin your site
Some ways to fix the problem
Unlinking- This is the perfect solution in case the linked page does not exist anymore or may be irrelevant. In that case removing the link completely is the perfect solution. The content directing to the referenced page should be removed as well.
Replacing- For irrelevant, unsupported resource which does not exist anymore, the best thing to do is replacing it with some alternative so that visitors find it useful. A web designer must know the replacement guide.
Correcting- Editing an incorrect URL and replacing it with correct one is the best method for tackling the problem here. There can be very simple problems which need to be investigated a little and can be solved very easily.
When website developers undertake their job, their main aim is to provide a good user experience through the site and unless the site functions well, that aim is a distant dream. So, it is essential to take care of broken links as fast as possible.
